By Simon de Bruyn
David Field’s controversial directorial debut, The Combination, has continued its strong box office performance, climbing to $420,000 on 34 screens over the weekend.
Meanwhile, the Kojo-backed $2 million thriller, Beautiful, opened this weekend and posted a very disappointing $22,406 across 19 screens.
Eric Bana’s documentary Love the Beast also posted low numbers in preview sessions, taking an average of $679 across 48 screens, for a total of $32,589. Madman plans to widen this release on 58 screens next week.
For the second week in a row, The Combination topped the limited release charts, beating new releases The Secret Life of Bees ($121,677) and Dean Spanley ($78,565) which opened on 44 and 34 screens respectively. Both films had held sneaks the week before.
Distributed by the Australian Film Syndicate, The Combination took an average $4,483 on 34 screens, for a total second weekend taking of $152,406.
If the film had been released in 2008, its $420,724 total would already place it among the top 10 highest grossing Australian feature films of the year (see chart).
AFS acquisitions and distribution manager Peter Castaldi said they had added two screens, in Warrawong, NSW and the Nova Palace in Adelaide, to bring the screen count up to 34 over the weekend.
He said the film would soon be losing several screens in Melbourne, but adding more in regional NSW, Northern Territory and Queensland, as well as Sydney metro areas where the film has performed strongest.
Interestingly, given the skew in screens towards the outer suburbs of the major cities, he added that several art house cinemas in city areas are among the strongest performers, particularily the George in Melboune and Palace Verona in Sydney.
Written by and starring actor George Basha and directed by David Field, The Combination was made for $1.3 million, with no government funding.